Ball of the Century with Brendan Cooper

The Kop in full swing at Anfield is one of the beautiful game’s most iconic sights: a sea of flags and scarves, a red wall of song and noise, and a crowd whose support has become the fulcrum of Liverpool Football Club’s unique identity. Yet the story behind it goes far beyond football, beginning with a disastrous British defeat during the Second Boer War and evolving into a history of working-class culture, collective memory and the unequalled bond between a club and its supporters.

In the space of a few decades, aviation advanced from fragile aircraft barely capable of crossing the Channel to the long-range bombers and fighter planes that would shape the Second World War. Behind this transformation were a motley cast of individuals: daring pilots, ambitious engineers, determined politicians and eccentric visionaries who helped turn flight from a dangerous novelty into a decisive military force.

Napoleon’s marshals were among the most formidable soldiers of the Napoleonic Wars, rising from backgrounds ranging from the working classes to the old aristocracy to become the senior military figures of the French Empire. But behind the battlefield victories lay a complicated world of rivalries, ambition, wealth, infidelity and fierce competition for Napoleon’s favour.

As the Second World War in Europe entered its final weeks, the outcome was no longer in doubt – but the fighting continued with extraordinary intensity. From the Allied crossing of the Rhine and the German defence of their homeland to the liberation of Belsen and the final bombing raids, the last days of the war were marked by courage, confusion, brutality and tragedy.

Thomas Cromwell and Oliver Cromwell are among the most recognisable figures of Tudor and Stuart history – but few people realise that they were related. Separated by a century, their lives were shaped by remarkably similar rises from relative obscurity to the centre of English political life.